Saturday, June 22, 2013

20 Reasons I Detest The Government
6/22/2013 12:01:00 AM - John Hawkins

1) Our own government chides those of us who pay taxes for being greedy because we don't want to give the politicians even more of our money to do things we don't want done at any price.

2) Increasingly, every bill that is proposed in D.C. seems to be crafted with the hope that at least 51% of the American people are ignorant or not paying attention to what the legislation actually does.

3) When there's a slip-up and members of Congress and their staff are *** gasp *** expected to follow the same laws as the rest of us on something like Obamacare, they immediately start looking for a way out.

4) Having an unelected bureaucrat decide that your property is a "swampland" because it rained yesterday or that you didn't follow some arcane legislation can lead to your spending years of your life dealing with an army of government regulators in court and costing you hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawyer fees; yet the bureaucrats pay no price at all for being wrong.

5) IRS employees like Lois Lerner can take the 5th Amendment when they're asked to testify about breaking the law to go after American citizens, but we're not allowed to take the 5th Amendment when the IRS demands information from us.

6) Who in the government was held responsible and punished for Fast and Furious? Benghazi? The subprime crisis caused by the government? Wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on Solyndra? Detroit going bankrupt? The IRS scandal? Giving someone as unstable as Bradley Manning access to classified data? How about allowing eight of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers to be registered to vote? The correct answer: nobody, which is exactly the problem.

7) The average government employee makes more than the people who are paying his salary.

8) If the economy goes bad, you may have to tighten your belt, but our government NEVER thinks it should have to cut back on its spending.

9) Inconvenient campaign promises by politicians are treated as almost entirely unrelated to what they do while governing.

10) There's so much stagecraft and deliberate deception in D.C. that it's impossible for the average person to understand what's going on without having someone who understands politics explaining it to him.

11) CBO scores on legislation are treated as legitimate and meaningful despite the fact that the rules have been rigged in such a way that the CBO ALMOST ALWAYS DRAMATICALLY UNDERESTIMATES the cost of government programs.

12) When Congress is in session, you won't find a more corrupt or dishonest group of human beings all gathered in any one place outside of a prison.

13) Our Congress REGULARLY votes on pork-laden bills written in legalese that NO ONE has actually read cover to cover.

14) We have so many laws and regulations that almost every American is breaking the law somehow on a daily basis.

15) When the Republican Party and Democrat Party collaborate in a bipartisan manner, it's almost always to screw the American people in order to help some influential or deep-pocketed special interest group.

16) Our politicians in D.C. are just as corrupt as those South American politicians we laugh at for taking bribes. The only difference is our politicians are smarter about it. A bribe is illegal, but giving their relative an incredibly highly paid job or slipping an earmark into a bill that will end up helping their investments to thrive is considered par for the course in D.C.

17) Our overbearing politicians and bureaucrats feel entitled to tell you how to run almost every aspect of your life. They think they know better than you what health care you should have, where your kids should be allowed to go to school, what you should be able to do with your own property, what TV, toilet or shower head you should be allowed to buy, what light bulb you should have and even what size of soda you should be able to drink.

18) The priority scale for most politicians goes campaign contributors, special interest groups, political bosses, lobbyists and then if they're in a competitive district, their constituents. Very few politicians in D.C. ever seem to give a thought to what's good for the country.

19) Almost every bill that passes is sold with lies that later turn out not to be true; yet the bills aren't repealed and the politicians who deceived the American people are rarely held accountable.

20) We have government employees whom we put into office, whose salaries we pay, telling US what to do and acting as if we work for them.
_____________________________________________________

If we are to believe candidate Marco Rubio’s comments during an Oct. 24, 2010 debate, it seems the Florida senator’s views on immigration reform have ‘evolved’ quite a bit since taking office.

During a debate with opponents Rep. Kendrick Meek and Gov. Charlie Crist, candidate Rubio argued that giving illegal immigrants an “earned path to citizenship,” which Crist, Sen. John McCain and former President George W. Bush had advocated, is basically amnesty.

"First of all, earned path to citizenship is basically code for amnesty. It's what they call it," Rubio said. "And the reality of it is this: This has to do with the bottom line that America cannot be the only country in the world that does not enforce its immigration laws. It is unfair to the people that have legally entered this country to create an alternative pathway for individuals who entered illegally and knowingly did so."

"If you do that, you will never have a legal immigration system that works," he continued. "No one is going to follow the law if there is an easier way to do it."

Rubio, who won that 2010 election, is now the leading Republican in the U.S. Congress pushing for illegal aliens to be given the earned path to citizenship that he himself insisted was "code for amnesty" only three years ago.
________________________________________________

This is the final chapter of Mike Adam’s excellent book “Letters to a Young Progressive.” In this book, Mike is writing letters to a fictional character, a progressive student named Zach.

Zach,

Once again, I’m packing in preparation to return to Colorado for the summer. Congratulations on your impending graduation. I’ve enjoyed discussing these issues with you in greater depth in my office hours this year, as well as in our correspondence. Now you’re ready to take off into “the real world,” where you’ll find plenty of opportunities to use the debating skills – and the courage – that you’ve honed here on campus. I want to send you just one final letter, about the deep contrast between the progressive worldview you have left behind and the Christian worldview you have chosen to accept.

A student in California once wrote to tap into my thoughts about Marxism and how it relates to Christianity. Specifically, he asked whether Jesus, if he returned today, would be a capitalist or a socialist. I recommended that the student read Money, Greed, and God by Jay Richards. His is the best book I’ve read on this issue, which would not be a very difficult one for most Christians to resolve.

There is some confusion on this topic as a result of some misinterpreted passages in the Book of Acts. Those passages describe an early congregation of Christians that voluntarily shared all things and all possessions as common property. See Acts 4:32-37 for a full overview and proper context.

Unfortunately, some Christians equate the voluntary sharing of property initiated by individuals with involuntary sharing of property compelled by governments. In fact, the distinction is no less subtle than the distinction between charity and theft.

It is also worth noting, before we proceed, that the assumption of private ownership of property is implicit in the Tenth Commandment, which tells us not to covet other people’s property. Coveting is not possible if all property is shared and there is no private ownership.

Put simply, forcing people to turn over their property at the point of a gun destroys Christian charity. There can be no charity without free will. Furthermore, if one were to insist on calling forcibly redistributed wealth “charity,” there is still an additional problem – socialism reduces wealth and, hence, reduces the absolute volume of one’s giving.

Capitalism is the only known economic system that actually produces wealth. Therefore, it increases the size of one’s tithe – as well as making it possible to give freely in the first place.

But there is an even better reason for Christians not to abandon capitalism for Marxism. Look at the following list of twentieth-century regimes that committed at least a million murders in the name of utopian Marxism:

Before we condemn capitalism as falling short of creating heaven on earth, we must admit that Marxism has come close to creating hell on earth. But heaven is not an option here on earth. We must simply choose the best available alternative – and as you can see from the statistics above, Marxism is not a good alternative.

Nonetheless, our country has moved in the direction of socialism over the last few decades, and the consequences of our socialist War on Poverty have been devastating. In 1965, the illegitimacy rate was 24 percent among blacks and 3 percent among whites. Within twenty-five years it had risen to 64 percent among blacks and 18 percent among whites.

Surely Jesus would not approve of the socialist policies that have so crippled the American family in recent decades. It seems that those policies have had the effect of weakening the basic family structure that is established in the Bible.

But why are the results of socialism always so bad? I think it is fair to say that socialism is largely a rebellion against the Judeo-Christian view of human nature that is established very clearly in the Bible – specifically in the third chapter of Genesis.

One cannot resolve the discrepancy between the view that man is fallen and in need of the redemptive power of Christ with the view that man is perfectible and in need of the redemptive power of government.

As I have said before, the fundamental mischaracterization of human nature has consequences. One of those consequences is policies that de-incentivize work. The assertion that work has significant intrinsic value to God is quite obvious and has a sound Biblical basis. God had Adam and Eve working in the Garden of Eden even before sin was introduced into the world.

After Christ returns, we are told that people will beat their swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. In other words, people will be expected to work and to be productive. Godly economic policies are ones that encourage productivity, not sloth.

Our War on Poverty is not one that lives up to that standard. It has been more like a War on Productivity. It is no wonder that grown men who will not work to support themselves are also abandoning their children in record numbers.

In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith said that capitalism would work best among people possessed of moral resources. Such moral restraints would keep their self-interest from becoming unfettered greed. This is consistent with what the Apostle Paul said in Philippians 2:4 when he called us to balance our self-interest with the interests of others.

We will never be able, as mere mortals, to bring about heaven on earth. But we cam prevent hell on earth by basing our economy on Christian capitalism, not Marxist atheism. Even Friedrich Nietzsche understood that if God is dead, then chaos ensues – and in the end, the only redistribution of wealth comes at the hands of thieves, burglars, and brigands.

The basic choice that we face in every area of life is the same – whether we’re talking about politics, family life, economics, gender roles, racism, crime, or poverty. Man is either an accident of nature whose choices are determined by his circumstances – so that we only need to tear society apart and remake it, in order to cure every problem and create a perfect world – or else a fallen creature who has used free will to rebel against a loving Creator and his moral law, which is written on human hearts so that we’ll never be happy (or even reliably in touch with reality) unless we acknowledge his law and return to his love.

Zach, this is the intellectual and spiritual battle we’re in. The good thing is, you’ve already picked the right side.
_______________________________________________

Once I thought of referring to Obama’s appointees as the untouchables, I decided to check out Eliot Ness, who led the small squad of honest cops engaged in waging war on Al Capone. Although I had been a big fan of the original TV series and an even bigger fan of the movie, I really knew very little about Mr. Ness.

It seems Ness and his guys had a lot to do with shutting down Capone’s breweries, but very little with finally bringing “Scarface” down for tax evasion. But nobody ever suggested he was anything but a tough, honest, straight-arrow cop. Unfortunately, unlike the character portrayed by Robert Stack and, later, Kevin Costner, his life didn’t end with Capone’s heading off to federal prison.

In Ness’s post-FBI life, he was married three times, divorced twice, and went from one job to another. He was an electronic parts salesman, a clerk in a book store, sold frozen hamburger patties to restaurants and once even tried to get himself elected mayor of Cleveland, losing to Thomas Burke by a 2-1 margin. But, mainly he spent his time in bars, boozing and telling cock-and-bull stories to his fellow barflies.

So, at the end of the movie, when the young reporter asks Ness what he plans to do once Prohibition ends, and Ness says, “Have a drink,” he wasn’t kidding. Not too surprisingly, he died at the age of 54.

The new untouchables, who are led by Obama, include the likes of Eric Holder, Jay Carney and Kathleen Sebelius. Unlike Ness’s guys, these folks are untouchable because of executive privilege. Only Obama can rid us of them, but he appreciates their boundless devotion to him.

If the nation doesn’t share his opinion, that’s just tough. They had their chance last November, and they blew it.

Eric Holder came into office announcing that whites are afraid to speak honestly about race, portraying white people as bigots when it is he who has displayed his blatant racism by refusing to indict the Black Panthers for voter intimidation and by informing his agents that during his tenure the Department of Justice will only prosecute whites for hate crimes.

Jay Carney, I keep being told, is merely doing what a press secretary is expected to do; namely, put a good face on everything Obama does and says. In other words, the job description is to lie on a daily basis. Some press secretaries do it better (Tony Snow), while some, like Carney and Robert Gibbs, do it worse.

The problem, as I see it, is that the job should not exist in the first place. No president should have at his disposal a person who functions the same way as a criminal defense attorney. I say the president, no matter what his party affiliation may be, should take 30 minutes out of his day to face the White House press corps and answer questions. If he has time to play basketball and golf, hold galas for show biz celebrities, congratulate gay athletes for outing themselves and fly off every other day for a fund raiser, he has the time to answer questions, thus freeing Jay Carney to find honest work while he still has some slight chance of saving his soul.

Speaking of Carney and all those other people whose job is to lie on behalf of Obama, the State Department, the IRS and the CIA, it’s time we all quit pussyfooting around and stop calling them spokesmen. Lying is what they do, liars is what they are.

Furthermore, let us be honest enough to call a freak a freak. After all, unless you believe that prisoners are entitled to have gender-altering surgery on the taxpayer’s dime or that employers shouldn’t be allowed to deny employment to transvestites or to those who choose to adorn themselves with metal hoops, studs and spikes in their noses, cheeks and tongues, they’ll label you a bigot or worse.

As for Kathleen Sebelius, who, when last heard from, was denying a 10-year-old dying child the right to be on a list for those requiring a donated organ, she is tailor-made for this administration. Who better to be the Secretary of Health and Human Resources than a woman who looks like the twin sister of Snow White’s stepmother? When she’s not denying a little girl the right to receive a lung that might save her life, Sebelius no doubt spends her spare time cackling madly and poisoning apples.

What this country needs is a sober Eliot Ness, eager to clean up the corruption in Washington. What it has, unfortunately, is Barack Obama, a Marxist airhead who is so infatuated with himself that in high school, I’m willing to bet, he invited himself to the prom.
___________________________________________________